


Second Sight

by Berty



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-05-01
Updated: 2005-05-01
Packaged: 2017-10-22 12:31:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/238027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berty/pseuds/Berty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you say what you need to when circumstances dictate that you can't?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Sight

Another day, another address, another planet. From the way we all hang around, you’d think we were awaiting a train to take us to work instead of a wormhole to demolecularise us and slingshot the bits across the galaxy. Sam settles her rifle on her shoulder, Teal’c stands quietly observing the preparations and I pretend to check my pack one more time before we go.

There is nothing routine about what we do though despite the practiced ease with which we wait to embark. There is no such thing as a straightforward mission. The ones that look good on paper aren’t, the ones that should go well don’t and the ones where we all return without injury and with something to show for our efforts are few and far between.

In the grand scheme of things it is a miracle that we are all still here after all these missions. It’s some kind of cosmic joke that SG-1 of all the teams is the one with all four original personnel, given the kind of crap we have encountered. Of course it wasn’t always that way. Over the years we have gained members of the team and lost them...most notably me...several times actually, a fact that Jack returns to whenever the opportunity arises.

For a little over a year I was off the team and off this plane of existence actually. The details of my ascension are still mostly lost to me. It seems like a dream now; from the moment I shot out that observation window on Llangara to the second I awoke in a cold windswept field near Vis Uban. I sometimes get flashes, residual images gone as quickly as I try to grasp them. I remember the sensation of my body failing while my mind struggled to continue. I recall explaining to Jack why I had to go and I remember his reluctance. I know that it hit him hardest but I couldn’t understand the overwhelming waves of anger and pain that rolled off him as I said goodbye; couldn’t reconcile then sorrowful facade with the bottomless grief I knew rolled behind it, so much more than for the loss of a friend. For a double PhD I sure was slow on the uptake.

My return was eventful, if a little confusing for me to start with but we soon settled back into the pattern that had become as natural as breathing to us; we go out, Jack pisses people off whenever he opens his mouth, we meet some new folk, we get shot at, Sam is smart, stuff blows up, Teal’c is inscrutable, we come home...usually. It’s what we do, as Jack would say.

I’m standing in the gate room watching Jack now, he checks and double checks, he watches, he assesses, he frowns when he asks questions and his tension is masked at all times by his laid back demeanour – but I’m not buying it, I know him better than that. You see this is the latest incarnation of our happy little band and Jack is watching us from behind the blast-proof glass of the control room with a silver star by his name and the responsibility for the lives of every person on this base squarely on his broad shoulders. He is watching SG-1 leave on our latest mission – and he hates it. It’s in the tightness of his jaw and in the deadness of his eyes.

With a thump I can feel through the floor, the first chevron engages. We are on our way to rendezvous with Bra’tac in the role of Earth observers to the Jaffa Alliance Conclave – nothing to worry about, a diplomatic mission. So according to the first law of Gate Travel – which states, and I quote “Shit Happens...often” - this is a mission that will blow up in our faces and call for a lot of running and shooting stuff.

I’m still watching Jack, his eyes uncompromising as he glances between the dialling computer and the gate, the glare of the screens casting shadows under his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks and in the curve of his lips. The same lips that kissed me goodbye this morning and told me to be careful.

He knows I’m watching him, he’s making me wait for it – the thing I need before I can step through that shimmering threshold. Harriman’s voice announces the sixth chevron as the gate spins one more time before I go and the instant the glyph is caught Jack straightens and gives me what I need.

It’s our thing and we’ve unwittingly been doing it for years, even before we became lovers. The look. We’ve never discussed it; we’ve never had to think about it. It’s ironic really that a man who has studied languages all his adult life should need an unspoken assurance so badly. But I do. We both know that this could be the last time. Every time we step through that portal, together or alone, we are tempting fate. Every safe return makes the odds on it happening again a little worse.

I think the first time he looked at me like that was on the steps of Ra’s temple as I held a staff weapon trained on his chest. He had looked surprised just for an instant when Ra had given me the weapon and ordered me to kill them, then he had narrowed his brown eyes, hard and unreadable as he tried to guess my next move. I remember feeling a kind of calmness come over me as I had primed the staff and Jack’s gaze had become suddenly eloquent. Trust. I couldn’t drag my eyes from his for a long, long moment. Then I had fired and all hell had broken loose.

The second time had been at his house, the night I lost Sha’uri. I was frantic, desperate to be doing something to find her, I couldn’t settle and I bounced around Jack’s living room like a trapped moth, battering myself against the jar that contained me. And he had let me, watched me ramble and stutter, spiralling closer and closer to the edge of despair and made sure I didn’t go over. Then I had paused to sip the beer he had given me and glanced at him. So much compassion in a single glance, enough for me to let him take a measure of my grief. I had been too fraught to fully recognise the magnitude of his gift, but had calmed to the point that I could sleep, if only for a couple of hours.

And belonging; In his sad, hopeless gaze on board a doomed ship with the smell of my burned skin and pain screaming in every nerve ending, overwhelming my senses, my existence narrowed to the weight of that one word in his eyes. I told him to go – to leave me and he did in the end, but the price was evident in his face. His eyes told me we belonged together and that this was not how it should be – and I believed him enough to make the leap of faith to wanting to stay alive and finding a way to make that happen.

In a temple, on a mythical planet when Jack was preparing to take on a Jaffa army and I was fighting a battle of my own we made the next connection. I finally understood what I had been called there to learn and I asked Jack to believe in me enough to put his gun down. God, I could see the struggle going on in his soul, being asked to do something so unnatural to him but the trust that was already there was joined by something new; Understanding. With no time to argue or even explain, he had recognised my conviction and given the order.

We fought the next time I saw it. I was trying to save a race of people and so was he; sadly they were not the same one. I didn’t disobey him...exactly. But I understood what I was doing would infuriate him and I did it anyway. The Gadmeer didn’t want to destroy the Enkarrans – I knew that – I just needed time to find a third way – a way we could all win. And I did, with about 3 seconds to spare. I didn’t realise how much it had cost Jack to know I was on the ship above the bomb he had just primed until I saw him. I was expecting anger, shouting, insults...Jack stuff. I hadn’t been ready for fear, in his eyes, in his face, in the tension in his body – I must have stared, because he looked away and bowed his head. I was so shocked I don’t think I even said sorry. Later, when Lotan was asked to join the Enkarrans on their new world, Jack finally met my eyes. Acceptance. This time I had to look away.

The final piece of the puzzle happened, aptly enough in the gateroom. We had just wished Jonas goodbye and I was only just keeping a lid on the flood of information that assaulted me as my life came back into focus. Memories and images bubbled up out of the depths of my mind, becoming clearer every moment. I suddenly remembered how Jack had felt when I had ascended, when I had turned to tell him that I didn’t know if we would ever see each other again. The shock of it rocked me back on my heels... literally. I had made some stupid inane remark about us getting paid and turned to smile at him to cover my stupefying confusion and there it was in that melted chocolate gaze...just as I had remembered. Love.

I don’t know how I had made it through the rest of that day. I don’t remember leaving the base and I don’t remember driving to his house. I awoke as he opened his front door, a suppressed excitement about him, almost as if he knew I was coming. He smiled gently at my wide eyes and my shaking hands and took me inside his home...and his heart. The rest, as they say, is history.

It is not the easiest thing in the world to have your SO as your CO. We took a few missions to find some sort of balance and even now having to be on guard all the time is wearing on both of us. We can’t have pet names for each other in case they should slip out in a briefing. We never arrive on base together. We always keep at least a desk between us all day – it’s hard but it’s necessary. And we can’t say goodbye the way we want to each time I have to go.

So we have this, this look. It encompasses all the things I saw in him over the years, trust to understanding to love and all points in between. All this and more. For one second I am not Dr. Jackson and he is not ‘the Man”. Because in that one second glance I see the look on his face when he talks to me in the mirror over my shoulder when I shave; I see his surprise when he has carbonised yet another dinner on the barbeque; I see the gentleness of him when he talks to Cassie about her Mom and I see the spark that flares when he thinks he has a hilarious put down to shut me up with. It’s the way his eyes are when he’s made me come for him, the way they smile at me when I am woken with kisses and coffee and the way they glitter in the private darkness of our bedroom when he wants me.

So I add this morning to all the things his eyes tell me. His gentle lips kissing sleep from my eyes, his warm familiar hands stroking the softest of awakenings from my drowsy, heavy body. His hot breath touching me, writing the shape of my name on my skin and the shape of his on my heart. His quiet, loving words as he moves beneath me, accepting me, urging me on and his arms surrounding me as we fall together into the welcoming light. All this in a one second glance that no one sees and no one marks, a place only we know, a place where one second and a lifetime are one and the same.

The escalating whine from the gate fills my ears as Jack’s eyes slide away from mine and back to the screens that tell him what destination is taking me away from him again, for a while. The wash from the wormhole rushes down the ramp and then retreats, beckoning to me, a silver blue invitation that I don’t want to pass up yet. I shrug my jacket onto my shoulders to cover the almost physical loss of Jack’s attention and blink a few times to remind myself where I am. Then I smile to Sam and we follow Teal’c up the ramp in unison. I don’t think I will ever get used to the Jack shaped gap in out formation. I’m not exactly worried, but it always felt reassuring to have him at my shoulder. I feel the touch of Jack’s eyes on my back with each footstep, his gaze settles softly like a benediction and a prayer. Sam and I hit the event horizon in synch and as the inexorable pull of the gate takes me I realise that Jack knows what my eyes tell him. I love you. Wait for me. I’ll be back soon.

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> With thanks to Pie, Jude, BJ and AnnO, but especially to Pepe.


End file.
